Homily for 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Wherever humans congregate, the temptation to dominate will present itself in some form. And the tendency is as strong in a tantrum-throwing child as it is in an arrogant boss. St. James expressed this same reality in the language of his own day: "Where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will be disorder and wickedness of every kind. You covet something and cannot obtain it, so you engage in disputes and conflicts." The disciples did not escape this malady, according to today's gospel. As they went along the road, they argued among themselves as to who was the greatest, Mark tells us.
I have often spoken in this Church about the experience and theory of German Jewish psychiatrist Victor Frankl. Frankl died at the age of 94. He is though by many to have been the most incisive German thinker of the late 20th century. While he never converted to Christianity, his thinking and his life-style were decidedly Christian. His main work, called "Man's search for meaning" written in 1959, sold over twenty million copies. But his death went unnoticed, since it was overshadowed by the death of Lady Diana. For example, Time magazine, the cultural barometer of the western world, rushed out a special edition, devoted exclusively to Lady Diana. The death of Frankl merited four lines in its regular edition. This was itself ironic - because Frankl had argued for thirty years that the western world had lost its spiritual and intellectual energy. Trivial imagery had replaced substantial and rigorous thought, shadow had replaced substance.
In a famous essay written in 1965, Frankl wrote that the television screen had replaced both the Jewish and Catholic tabernacles as the center of communal attention and wonder. The sense of mystery and wonder of these two communities was sustained by their gazing at their respective tabernacles. From their tabernacles, Catholics and Jews traditionally derived their energy; they sat in silent contemplation and then went forth renewed to translate the Christian message into action. The new secular tabernacle, the TV screen, only dissipated energy, creating nothing more dynamic than couch potatoes. Through this powerful instrument, reality is filtered. We are forced to see the world as others would have us see it. Men like Rupert Murdoch impose their own priorities upon us. What is important to Murdoch today will be important to us tomorrow, despite the fact that our cultural background is so so different from his. Television set out as our servant; we have become its helpless slaves.
Frankl served three and a half years in a German concentration camp. As a medical doctor he was of some use to his captors, so his survival is easily explained at one level. He was in a unique position to study power play in its most corrupt manifestation ever. His father, mother, brother and his wife died in various camps or the gas ovens. With the sole exception of his sister, his entire family perished at the hands of the Nazis. His famous book was written 15 years after liberation. It is in effect a study of the corrupting influence of power on human beings, both on the captives and the captors.
He found that hunger, humiliation, fear, and anger are rendered tolerable simply through retaining before his mind the image of his wife. The hope of meeting her again sustained him. Many of his fellow prisoners lost their struggle for survival simply because they had nothing obvious to live for. Some found the whole experience unbearable and chose to die at their own hands. Frankl and his friends persisted and lived because, as he says himself, they had a reason to live: "He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how." While Frankl's lessons were learned in dramatic and unspeakably evil conditions, he applied the lessons to life as it is lived in the normal world.
At the end of his book Frankl concludes that every human being is driven by four basic instincts: self-preservation, self-propagation, the felt need to dominate others, and the need to make sense of our world. All power struggles have their origins in the human need to dominate others. It is deeply ingrained in the human being. We see this present in all areas of human activity, whether home, at work or at play. Indeed many look upon play as the civilised harnessing of this drive to dominate others. Obviously, the world of politics thrives on it; indeed politics would not be possible without it; and the Church itself is not untainted. This is the reality which St. James calls to our attention in today's gospel: "Those conflicts and disputes among you; where do they come from?. You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder." Unfortunately you will find as many power mongers within the church institutions as you will in any other human institutions. People have been destroyed by it. Lives have been wrecked by it.
In today's gospel we see that the apostles were not immune either. Just as Jesus was in the act of explaining that he was to suffer and die for them, they were entirely immersed in a very different discussion. They were arguing among themselves as to which of them was the greatest, which of them would dominate the group. Despite having spent over two years in the company of Jesus, they missed the central point of his message. Matthew also recounts this embarrassing incident but he also records the actual rebuke of Jesus: "Among the pagans, the rulers lord it over them, and their great men make their authority felt. This is not to happen among you." Jesus has an entirely different agenda. His project, if it is to remain faithful to him, will run along totally different lines. The will to serve will replace the will to dominate others as the motivating force in his community. The master himself, and his life and death in the service of his people, is to be our model.
The Church exists as a servant of the world, as a servant of humanity. It has no other function. That is the path mapped out for it by its founder. Its function is to present the face of Jesus the servant to successive generations, to succeeding centuries. Unfortunately, this role is not always obvious. The more it clamors for political mastery, the less credible it will become as a messenger of the servant. Too often the Church as a human institution has forgotten this message: like its master before it, it came to serve, not to be served and, if necessary, to give its life as a ransom for many. Indeed every pope, bishop and priest could do worse than to read today's gospel every morning of his life. He might thereby minimise the damage he would do to that same gospel, through an abuse of power, in the course of that day.